The Halsey Institute has commissioned world renowned artist, Long-Bin Chen, to create a site-specific sculptural work that will be on view in the Sanders Rotunda of the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library concurrent with the Rebound exhibition within the Halsey Institute galleries, May 23 – July 6, 2013. Chen will create the work during a residency May 1 – 23.

Long-Bin Chen’s artwork seeks to combine cultural meaning and belief systems from the East with those of the West. He works with local printed material from the communities in which he is an artist-in-residence, including telephone books, magazines, and other cultural debris of our information society. At first glance, the sculptures appear to be stonework, and most viewers are surprised to learn that Chen’s sculptures made from paper, and hence soft and relatively delicate.

For the installation at the Addlestone Library, Chen will create a Zen Garden using books from the Charleston community.

Increasingly, contemporary artists are exploring the interplay between the function, structure, and format of books. Curated by Halsey Institute assistant director, Karen Ann Myers, Rebound: Dissections and Excavations in Book Art brings together the work of five mixed-media artists from around the world who sculpt, scrape, bend, and carve books into astonishing compositions. Doug Beube, Long-Bin Chen, Brian Dettmer, Guy Laramée, and Francesca Pastine transform various types of printed material through sculptural intervention. Despite the individual perspective of each artist, there are remarkable connections in the themes and ideas they respectively mourn and celebrate. The fascinating range of examples, as diverse as books themselves, offers eloquent proof that, despite the advances of digital media, the book’s legacy as a carrier of ideas and communication is being expanded today.

For more information about Rebound or Long-Bin Chen’s work at the College of Charleston, please contact Stephanie Alexander at alexandersd@cofc.edu.